I played with Mr Potato Head all the time. My family was big on baked potatoes and you need to pierce the skin for them to bake properly so that was me helping in the kitchen, grandma would put the washed potatoes on the kitchen table with my Mr Potato Head parts and say "come play in here for while". Although my favorite toy of all time was the Hotwheels launcher (rubberband powered thing to shove the cars on the tracks), I'd get a bunch of Sunday morning newspaper rubberbands and setup my tracks on an angle and try to launchthe cars over the breakfast bar, good manufacturing never managed to break that thing, smashed my fingers pretty good a couple of times though.
You wouldn't happen to work for the Idaho Department of Tourism, would you? ;)
Hotwheels (and Matchbox) cars keep making it into the list of finalists, but never quite make it into the THOF.